24 less, enthusiastic, he devoted a whole is- sue of the parIsh magazine to supporting the Soviet persecution of the Church. Christ, he argued, was a Communist anyway. Nobody understood it. He was amazed. At last, after so much search- ing, he belIeved he had found the true meaning of Christianity. Did the Church of England not care for Chris- tianity? Apparently it didn't. He was advised to go north, where, it was hoped, he might sink into oblivion T HE square, gloomy house in Lan- cashire rose like a fortress out of a forest of dripping shrubs-laurel a d rhododendron, privet and yew. The cotton mills and foundries glowed like Hel1 under a steel sky, and the huge church, built in memory of the Napo- leonic Wars, echoed like atom b for the few living souls who crept inside it. WearIly, with the resignation of a man who has been through thIS move many times before, he started a youth club. He was over fifty-the prime, he insisted aggressively, of life-and so hea vy that it became increasingly diffi- cult for him to move about. He went everywhere by car, hunchecÍ over the wheel, saluting his parishioners with a gesture that was half gracious, half insulting. For days at a time, he sat in his study-the same desk, the same armchair, the same glass-fronted book- shelves-speaking to no one, scribbling away at some new work that was to enlighten the world, or trying to crowd out the emptiness with bIts of Bertrand Russell, a few predigested scraps of Einstein, populating his desert with Ethel Mannin, A. S. Neill, Rudolf Steiner, Mme. Blavatsky, Krafft-Eb- ing. Every Saturday, in a hushed house, he wrote what he thought was a new sermon, but they were all the same, a torment of words dIsgorged to a slowly dwindling congregation. His voice was still remarkable, but it had nothing to say. Like Fowler, Graham Greene's character in "The Quiet American," he longed for the existence of someone to whom he could say he was sorry. There was no one. For the first time in over twenty years, he brought the pho- tograph of his mother out of his drawer, and set it between his watch and his col- lar box on the bedroom mantelpiece. One day, while conducting a funeral service, he stumbled and fell Into the open grave. Climbing out, cumbersome and horrified and ashamed, his surplice streaked with mud, he knew that everything was really over. He was not even afraid of death. It was no more than a hole in the ground, a box in the earth He apologized, finished the THE LONG WALK The light was already spent when they came To a sign which read "Shore DInners," and a shack Squat in the haze, where peöple, back-to-back At counters, partaking of fish Served piping hot with fritters, lame- ly poked the dish. Having walked this far, surely they might come Before dark to some other spot, perhaps One more subtly lit, with clean cloth nap- kIns, and a waiter who would provide i\JI favors to make them welcome, And prod their wit beside. How hard (now that they think of it!) to say Exactly what they wished: to prolong theIr Walk into the moon, lest ill-cooked fare sour TheIr speech; or find some common ground, By choosing a place to eat, to say Such words as might be found. And so they went, by a bay which ran to ink Beneath stars and scribbled cypress. They spoke Never of hunger. They might have wished one tok- en ship to pass, the cabin bright In semblance of feast, that the} might drInk StoIcally to the night. Need it be said how, closing for the nIght, The owner himself served them, brusquely, cold Fish at a counter, where they sat foretold, And backed by vacant stools; how rain Fell profitlessly chill and light, And lIght rained down? . service, and went home. There was nothing else he could do. His searching now had the despera- tion of a man finall) cornered, without sanctuary. He became a nudIst. But in the colony where he went for a vaca- tion he found nothing among the drip- ping trees but a group of elderly ladies dressed in spectacles, knitting scarves for their less enlightened relatives. At this time, he weighed over sixteen stone, and there was much of him to suffer. He spent one wretched night in the chalet he had booked for three weeks, and came home. The next morning, as dawn burst over the cotton mills, he was to be seen wanderIng naked about the shrubbery, a great, pale, discon- .. .. .. \ "..C r_\""':. 7"-. ' J .. :::...... .:I _... .. " '" --:.. v _ ' ..' " I ..... _ ,. .' . . (I -,' -- ... '" ...t,- " . . ',' - .:-, ,,,,:::, ,. ,I) (, I, \,,--:: . ',. '.i>''' , I. { I \\ ..!! \ t ,'\ \, .'. . I . '1 , . · .. 'Y\\'( \'({: j"'Ji/ I ' I . 1 1 \" I ' # , '" \1' ". \ 't t ,., I t 4 ,., ..... i!Q I \. -';tI., d i t;., "J . , I ,.,. .., . I...!. f& !. 4 '..:., . · I '1 $ \ ,. ! # : .:: $ . :. . .. ,; ,..!! : ;: t l:;;:;: :'!I ::I. c -DAVID GALLER . solate shape in the gritty light, looking for something irretrievably lost. ^ T the age of sixty, already an old n. man, he drifted west, to Som- erset, setting up his desk, his arm- chair, his bookshelves in yet another study, laboriously climbing the stairs of a new pulpit, looking down from it on the same faces, the same bowed heads, the same expressions of patient boredom. The Church of England had fulfilled its promise; he was still alive, his children had been educated, he was sure of a pen- sion, however small. With a sort of awkward gratitude, he tried to do his best. He started a youth club. He intro- duced religious film shows into the church. Some forgotten superstition, stirring again at last, prevented him from putting the screen on the altar, which, since the church was small, was the obvious place. He fixed it up between the choir stalls, and the congregatIon peered intently, uncomprehending, at the vast shadows, vaguely Oriental in appearance, that flickered, unfocussed, between the damp Norman pillars. The electrical part of the apparatus was un-